Danby as if to dismiss the subject, "Any-
thing stirring in London when you were there, Tom?
thing stirring in London when you were there, Tom?
Warner - World's Best Literature - v04 - Bes to Bro
His descriptions of life in the United
States are therefore always the result of a foreigner's observation.
His generous humanity appeals to all races, however, and his books
have been successfully translated into German, Russian, and Nor-
wegian. For years he had been collecting matter for an extensive
history of Scandinavian literature,- a task for which his nationality,
his scholarship, and his mastery of the English language especially
fitted him. His sudden death at forty-seven prevented its accom-
plishment, and perhaps deprived him of a still wider and solider
fame.
## p. 2275 (#473) ###########################################
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN
2275
A NORWEGIAN DANCE
From Gunnar, a Tale of Norse Life. ' Copyright 1874, by J. R. Osgood & Co.
Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons
THEY
HEY all hurried back to the hall. Gudrun might well wish to
ask questions, but she dared not; for she felt the truth, but
was afraid of it. They could not help seeing, when they
entered the hall, that many curious glances were directed toward
them. But this rather roused in both a spirit of defiance.
Therefore, when Gunnar was requested to begin the stev he
chose Ragnhild for his partner, and she accepted. True, he was
a houseman's son, but he was not afraid. There was a giggling
and a whispering all round, as hand in hand they stepped out
on the floor. Young and old, lads and maidens, thronged eagerly
about them. Had she not been so happy, perhaps she would not
have been so fair. But as she stood there in the warm flush
of the torchlight, with her rich blond hair waving down over
her shoulders, and with that veiled brightness in her eyes, her
beauty sprang upon you like a sudden wonder, and her presence
was inspiration. And Gunnar saw her; she loved him: what
cared he for all the world beside? Proudly he raised his head
and sang:-
Gunnar - There standeth a birch in the lightsome lea,
Ragnhild-
In the lightsome lea;
Gunnar So fair she stands in the sunlight free,
Ragnhild-
In the sunlight free;
Both-
So fair she stands in the sunlight free.
-
Gunnar
Both-
Ragnhild-High up on the mountain there standeth a pine,
There standeth a pine;
Gunnar
Ragnhild-So stanchly grown and so tall and fine,
So tall and fine;
So stanchly grown and so tall and fine.
-
A maiden I know as fair as the day,
As fair as the day;
Gunnar
Ragnhild-
Gunnar She shines like the birch in the sunlight's play,
Ragnhild-
In the sunlight's play;
Both- She shines like the birch in the sunlight's play.
-
Ragnhild-I know a lad in the spring's glad light,
In the spring's glad light;
Gunnar -
―
## p. 2276 (#474) ###########################################
2276
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN
Ragnhild-Far-seen as the pine on the mountain-height,
On the mountain-height;
Far-seen as the pine on the mountain-height.
Gunnar-
Both-
Gunnar So bright and blue are the starry skies,
Ragnhild-
The starry skies;
Gunnar
Ragnhild-
Both
But brighter and bluer that maiden's eyes,
That maiden's eyes;
But brighter and bluer that maiden's eyes.
-
Ragnhild-And his have a depth like the fjord, I know,
Gunnar
The fjord, I know;
Ragnhild-Wherein the heavens their beauty show,
Gunnar -
Their beauty show;
Both
Wherein the heavens their beauty show.
Gunnar The birds each morn seek the forest glade,
Ragnhild-
The forest glade;
Gunnar So flock my thoughts to that lily maid,
Ragnhild-
That lily maid;
Both
So flock my thoughts to that lily maid.
――――――
Ragnhild-The moss it clingeth so fast to the stone,
Gunnar
So fast to the stone;
Ragnhild-So clingeth my soul to him alone,
Gunnar
To him alone;
Both-
So clingeth my soul to him alone.
―
Gunnar -
Ragnhild-
Gunnar-
Ragnhild-
Both
-
-
Ragnhild-The plover hath but an only tone,
Gunnar
An only tone;
Ragnhild-My life hath its love, and its love alone,
Gunnar-
Its love alone;
Both
My life hath its love, and its love alone.
――――
Each brook sings its song, but forever the same,
Forever the same;
Forever my heart beats that maiden's name,
That maiden's name;
Forever my heart beats that maiden's name.
Gunnar The rivers all to the fjord they go,
Ragnhild-
To the fjord they go;
Gunnar So may our lives then together flow,
Ragnhild-
Together flow;
Both
Oh, may our lives then together flow!
-
## p. 2277 (#475) ###########################################
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN
2277
Here Gunnar stopped, made a leap toward Ragnhild, caught
her round the waist, and again danced off with her, while a
storm of voices joined in the last refrain, and loud shouts of
admiration followed them. For this was a stev that was good
for something; long time it was since so fine a stev had been
heard on this side of the mountains. Soon the dance became
general, and lasted till after midnight. Then the sleigh-bells and
the stamping of hoofs from without reminded the merry guests
that night was waning. There stood the well-known swan-shaped
sleigh from Henjum, and the man on the box was Atle himself.
Ragnhild and Gudrun were hurried into it, the whip cracked,
and the sleigh shot down over the star-illumined fields of snow.
The splendor of the night was almost dazzling as Gunnar
came out from the crowded hall and again stood under the open
sky. A host of struggling thoughts and sensations thronged
upon him.
He was happy, oh, so happy! —at least he tried to
persuade himself that he was; but strange to say, he did not
fully succeed. Was it not toward this day his yearnings had
pointed, and about which his hopes had been clustering from
year to year, ever since he had been old enough to know what
yearning was? Was it not this day which had been beckoning
him from afar, and had shed light upon his way like a star, and
had he not followed its guidance as faithfully and as trustingly as
those wise men of old? "Folly and nonsense," muttered he; "the
night breeds nightly thoughts! " With an effort he again brought
Ragnhild's image before his mind, jumped upon his skees, and
darted down over the glittering snow. It bore him toward the
fjord. A sharp, chill wind swept up the hillside, and rushed against
him. "Houseman's son! " cried the wind. Onward he hastened.
"Houseman's son! " howled the wind after him. Soon he reached
the fjord, hurried on up toward the river-mouth, and coming to
the Henjum boat-house, stopped, and walked out to the end of
the pier, which stretched from the headland some twenty to thirty
feet out into the water. The fjord lay sombre and restless
before him. There was evidently a storm raging in the ocean,
for the tide was unusually high, and the sky was darkening from
the west eastward. The mountain-peaks stood there, stern and
lofty as ever, with their heads wrapped in hoods of cloud. Gun-
nar sat down at the outer edge of the pier, with his feet hang-
ing listlessly over the water, which, in slow and monotonous
plashing, beat against the timbers. Far out in the distance he
## p. 2278 (#476) ###########################################
2278
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN
could hear the breakers roar among the rocky reefs; first the
long, booming roll, then the slowly waning moan, and the great
hush, in which the billows pause to listen to themselves. It is
the heavy deep-drawn breath of the ocean. It was cold, but
Gunnar hardly felt it.
He again stepped into his skees and followed the narrow road,
as it wound its way from the fjord up along the river. Down
near the mouth, between Henjum and Rimul, the river was
frozen, and could be crossed on the ice. Up at Henjumhei it
was too swift to freeze. It was near daylight when he reached
the cottage. How small and poor it looked! Never had he seen
it so before; - very different from Rimul. And how dark and
narrow it was all around it! At Rimul they had always sun-
shine. Truly, the track is steep from Henjumhei to Rimul; the
river runs deep between.
## p. 2279 (#477) ###########################################
2279
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
(1837-)
W
HATEVER objections may be made to the sensational character
of many of Miss Braddon's earlier novels, her place is cer-
tainly in the ranks of the "born" story-tellers. Although
still in the prime of life, she has been before the public for thirty-
seven years. Her books have been produced in amazingly rapid and
continuous succession. She was born in London in 1837, wrote little
stories in her early teens, and was fond of entertaining her com-
panions with startling original tales.
When a young girl she conceived a passion for the stage, and a
dramatic or melodramatic - element is conspicuous in most of her
novels. She was barely twenty-one when she had completed a comedi-
etta, The Lover of Arcadia,' which, after many alterations and
revisions, was put on the stage of the Strand Theatre in 1860, with —
naturally but moderate success. Her disappointment was extreme.
She gave up the hope of becoming a successful dramatist. Her next
venture, like that of most young authors, was a small volume of
poems, of which Garibaldi was the chief theme. About this time she
also wrote a number of highly colored, much strained tales in the
Temple Bar and St. James' magazines. These tales drew attention,
and awoke an echo which neither the comedietta nor the poems had
done, making it clear to her that in narrative fiction lay her strength.
She was ambitious, she wanted money even more than reputation,
and she has followed narrative fiction most diligently ever since, with
widening and indisputable success.
In 1862 appeared her first full-fledged novel, 'Lady Audley's Se-
cret. ' It achieved instantaneous distinction and an enormous sale,
six editions being disposed of in as many weeks. She had finally hit
the mark, though not by accident. She had carefully thought out a
new scheme, and had corrected literary mistakes by her late expe-
rience. She knew that the first desire of novel readers is for novelty,
a characteristic usually preferred to originality, which is often much
more slowly recognized. Mrs. Gore's fashionable novels, correct in
portraiture and upholstery, clever but monotonous, had had their
day; Mrs. Trollope's coarse and caustic delineations; G. P. R. James's
combats, adventures, skirmishes, disguises, trials, and escapes, and
Bulwer's sentimental and grandiloquent romances, had begun to pall
upon the public taste. Miss Braddon perceived that the time had
-
--
## p. 2280 (#478) ###########################################
2280
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
come for something new, so 'Lady Audley's Secret' was a striking
innovation.
Hitherto, wickedness had been ugly. She endued it with grace
and beauty. She invented a mystery of crime surrounded by every-
day circumstances, yet avoiding the "detective novel» mechanism.
A new story, Aurora Floyd,' repeated the immense success of
'Lady Audley. ' Novel after novel followed, full of momentous inci-
dents, of surprises leading to new surprises. All the time Miss Brad-
don was observing much, correcting much in her methods and ideas.
She studied manners closely; drew ingenious inferences; suggested
dramatic and startling conclusions. She has, too, introduced into
modern fiction the beguiling female fiend, who, like the Italian
duchess of the Middle Ages, betrays with a smile, and with one arm
about her lover beckons to the hired bravo to do his bloody work.
Her plots, though sometimes forced, are ingenious and exciting. The
movement of her stories is swift, and the scenes and personages con-
tribute to the appointed end. As the author has grown in literary
stature, a finer and often admirable effort is made to analyze or to
develop character, as an element subservient to the exigencies of the
stirring catastrophe.
Her style and treatment have matured with practice and with
years, and her later novels display artistic form and finish. Her
'Mohawks' is in many respects a superb study of fashionable life,
with several historical portraits introduced, of London in the time of
Pope, St. John, Walpole, and Chesterfield a tableau of great move-
ment and accuracy of composition. In thirty-five years she has writ-
ten more than sixty stories, the best of them being perhaps this fine
semi-historical melodrama. Several of her earlier fictions have been
successfully dramatized. An exquisite little tale for Christmas-tide,
'The Christmas Hirelings,' is an evidence of her lightness of touch
and refinement of conception in a trifle. In 1874 Miss Braddon mar-
ried John Maxwell, a well-known London publisher.
――――
## p. 2281 (#479) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2281
THE ADVENT OF THE HIRELINGS>
E
From The Christmas Hirelings': copyrighted by Harper and Brothers
VERYTHING had been made ready for the little strangers.
There were fires blazing in two large bedrooms overhead-
rooms with a door of communication. In one there were
still the two little white beds in which Lilian and Sibyl had
slept when they were children; poor Lilian, whose bed was in
the English cemetery at Florence, under a white marble monu-
ment erected by her sorrowing husband, and whose sorrowing
husband had taken to himself a second wife five years ago.
Every one knew where Lilian was lying, but no one at Penlyon
Castle knew where Sibyl's head had found rest. All that people
knew about the disobedient daughter was that her husband had
died within three or four years of her marriage, worn to death
in some foreign mission. Of his luckless widow no one at Pen-
lyon had heard anything, but it was surmised that her father
made her an allowance. He could hardly let his only daughter
starve, people said, however badly she might have treated him.
Lady Lurgrave's early death had been a crushing blow to his
love and to his pride. She had died childless.
Sir John had heard the carriage stop, and the opening of the
hall door; and although he pretended to go on reading his paper
by the lamp placed close at his elbow, the pretense was a poor
one, and anybody might have seen that he was listening with
all his might.
The footman had opened the hall door as the wheels drew
near; it was wide open when the carriage stopped. The red
light from the hall fire streamed out upon the evening gray, and
three little silvery voices were heard exclaiming:-
"Oh, what a pretty house! "
"Oh, what a big house! "
And then the smallest voice of the three with amazing dis
tinctness:
"What an exceedingly red fire. "
The carriage door flew open, and two little girls all in red
from top to toe, and one little boy in gray, rolled out in a heap,
or seemed to roll out, like puppies out of a basket, scrambled
## p. 2282 (#480) ###########################################
2282
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
on to their feet and ran up the steps,-Mr. Danby, slim and
jaunty as usual, following them.
"Good gracious, how tiny they are! " cried Adela, stooping
down to kiss the smaller girl, a round red bundle, with a round
little face, and large dark gray eyes shining in the firelight.
The tiny thing accepted the kiss somewhat shrinkingly, and
looked about her, awed by the grandeur of the hall, the large
fireplace and blazing logs, the men in armor, or the suits of
armor standing up and pretending to be men.
"I don't like them," said the tiny girl, clinging to Danby
and pointing at one of these mailed warriors with a muffled red
hand: "they're not alive, are they, Uncle Tom? "
"No, no, no, Moppet, they're as dead as door-nails. "
"Are they? I don't like dead people. "
"Come, come, Moppet, suppose they're not people at all-no
more than a rocking-horse is a real live horse. We'll pull one of
them down to-morrow and look inside him, and then you'll be
satisfied. "
The larger scarlet mite, larger by about an inch, older by a
year, was standing before the fire, gravely warming her hands,
spreading them out before the blaze as much as hands so tiny
could spread themselves. The boy was skipping about the hall,
looking at everything, the armed warriors especially, and not at
all afraid.
"They're soldiers, aren't they? " he asked.
"Yes, Laddie. "
"I should like to be dressed like that, and go into a battle
and kill lots of people. I couldn't be killed myself, could I, if I
had that stuff all over me? "
"Perhaps not, Laddie; but I don't think it would answer.
You'd be an anachronism. ”
"I wouldn't mind being a nackerism if it saved me from
being killed," said Laddie.
"Come, little ones, come and be presented to your host," said
Mr. Danby, as the footman opened the library door; and they
all poured in-Danby, Adela, and the children- the smallest
running in first, her sister and the boy following, considerably
in advance of the grown-ups.
Moppet ran right into the middle of the room as fast as her
little red legs could carry her; then seeing Sir John sitting where
the bright lamplight shown full upon his pale elderly face, with
## p. 2283 (#481) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2283
its strongly marked features, black eyebrows, and silvery-gray
hair, she stopped suddenly as if she had beheld a Gorgon, and
began to back slowly till she brought herself up against the
silken skirt of Adela Hawberk's gown; and in that soft drapery
she in a manner absorbed herself, till there was nothing to be
seen of the little neatly rounded figure except the tip of a bright
red cap and the toes of two bright red gaiters.
The elder mite had advanced less boldly, and had not to beat
so ignominious a retreat. She was near enough to Mr. Danby
to clutch his hand, and holding by that she was hardly at all
frightened.
The boy, older, bolder, and less sensitive than either of the
girls, went skipping around the library as he had skipped about
the hall, looking at things and apparently unconscious of Sir
John Penlyon's existence.
"How d'ye do, Danby? " said Sir John, holding out his hand
as his old friend advanced to the fire, the little red girl hanging
on to his left hand, while he gave his right to his host. "Upon
my word, I began to think you were never coming back. You've
been an unconscionable time. One would suppose you had to
fetch the children from the world's end. "
"I had to bring them to the world's end, you might say.
Boscastle is something more than a day's journey from London
in the depth of winter. "
"And are these the children? Good heavens, Danby! what
could you be thinking about to bring us such morsels of hu-
manity? "
"We wanted children," said Danby, "not hobbledehoys. "
"Hobbledehoys! no, but there is reason in everything. You
couldn't suppose I wanted infants like these-look at that little
scrap hidden in Adela's frock. It's positively dreadful to contem-
plate! They will be getting under my feet. I shall be treading
upon them, and hurting them seriously. "
"No you won't, Jack; I'll answer for that. "
"Why not, pray? "
"Because of their individuality. They are small, but they
are people. When Moppet comes into a room everybody knows
she is there. She is a little scared now; but she will be as bold
* as brass in a quarter of an hour. "
Sir John Penlyon put on his spectacles and looked at the
little hirelings more critically. Their youth and diminutive size
## p. 2284 (#482) ###########################################
2284
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
had been a shock to him. He had expected bouncing children
with rosy faces, long auburn hair, and a good deal of well-
developed leg showing beneath a short frock. These, measured
against his expectations, were positively microscopic.
Their cheeks were pale rather than rosy. Their hair was
neither auburn nor long. It was dark hair, and it was cropped
close to the neat little heads, showing every bump in the broad,
clever-looking foreheads. Sir John's disapproving eyes showed
him that the children were more intelligent than the common
run of children; but for the moment he was not disposed to
accept intelligence instead of size.
"They are preposterously small," he said "not at all the
kind of thing I expected. They will get lost under chairs or
buried alive in waste-paper baskets. I wash my hands of them.
Take them away, Adela. Let them be fed and put to bed. ”
Then turning to Mr.
Danby as if to dismiss the subject, "Any-
thing stirring in London when you were there, Tom? "
Before Danby could answer, Moppet emerged from her shelter,
advanced deliberately, and planted herself in front of Sir John
Penlyon, looking him straight in the face.
"I'm sorry you don't like us, Mr. Old Gentleman," she said.
Every syllable came with clear precision from those infantine
lips. Moppet's strong point was her power of speech. Firm,
decisive, correct as to intonation came every sentence from the
lips of this small personage. Ponderous polysyllables were no
trouble to Moppet. There was only an occasional consonant that
baffled her.
"Who says I don't like you? " said Sir John, taken aback,
and lifting the animated bundle of red cloth on to his knee.
He found there was something very substantial inside the
wooly cloak and gaiters: a pair of round plump arms and sturdy
little legs, a compact little figure which perched firmly on his knee.
"You said so," retorted Moppet, with her large gray eyes
very wide open, and looking full into his. "You don't like us
because we are so very small. Everybody says we are small, but
everybody doesn't mind. Why do you mind? "
"I didn't say anything about not liking you, little one. I was
only afraid you were too small to go out visiting. "
"I went out to tea when I was two, and nobody said I was
too small. I have real tea at parties, not milk-and-water. And
I have been out to tea often and often-haven't I, Lassie ? »
## p. 2285 (#483) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2285
"Not so many times as I have,” replied the elder red thing,
with dignity.
She was standing in front of the wide old fireplace, warming
her hands, and she was to Sir John's eye somewhat suggestive
of a robin-redbreast that had fluttered in and lighted there.
"Of course not, because you're older," said Moppet, disgusted
at this superfluous self-assertion on her sister's part.
"I am
always good at parties—ain't I, Uncle Tom? " turning an appeal-
ing face to Mr. Danby.
"So these Lilliputians are your nieces, Danby! " exclaimed
Sir John.
"Well, no, they are not exactly nieces, though they are very
near and dear. I am only a jury uncle. "
"A jury uncle! " cried Moppet, throwing her head back and
laughing at the unknown word.
"A jury uncle! " echoed the other two, and the three laughed
prodigiously; not because they attached any meaning to the
word, but only because they didn't know what it meant. That
was where the joke lay.
"You know that in Cornwall and in Sicily all the elderly
men are uncles, and all the old women aunts-everybody's
uncles and aunts," concluded Mr. Danby.
Moppet still occupied Sir John's knee. She felt somehow
that it was a post of honor, and she had no inclination to sur-
render it. Her tiny fingers had possessed themselves of his
watch-chain.
"Please show me your watch," she said.
Sir John drew out a big hunter.
Moppet approached her little rosy mouth to the hinge and
blew violently.
"Why don't it open as Uncle Tom's watch does when I
blow? " she asked. "Is it broken? "
"Blow again, and we'll see about that," said Sir John, under-
standing the manœuvre.
The big bright case flew open as Moppet blew.
"Take care it doesn't bite your nose off. ”
“How big and bright it is—much bigger and brighter than
Uncle Tom's. "
"Uncle Tom's is a lady's watch, and Uncle Tom's a lady's
man," said Sir John, and the triple peal of childish laughter
which greeted this remark made him fancy himself a wit.
1
## p. 2286 (#484) ###########################################
2286
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
Small as they were, these children were easily amused, and
that was a point in their favor, he thought.
"Tea is ready in the breakfast-room," said Adela.
"Tea in the breakfast-room. Oh, how funny! " And again
they all laughed.
At any rate, they were not doleful children-
no homesick airs, no bilious headaches -— so far.
"I dare say they will all start measles or whooping-cough
before we have done with them," thought Sir John, determined
not to be hopeful.
"Oh, we are to come to tea, are we? " he said, cheerily, and
he actually carried Moppet all the way to the breakfast-room,
almost at the other end of the rambling old house, and planted
her in a chair by his side at the tea-table. She nestled up close
beside him.
"You like us now, don't you? she asked.
"I like you. "
--
no long faces,
"And you'll like her," pointing to her sister with a small
distinct finger, "and him," pointing to her brother, "to-morrow
morning. You'll know us all to-morrow morning. "
"To-morrow will be Christmas," said Laddie, as if giving a
piece of useful information to the company in general.
"Christmas! " cried Danby; "so it will. I mustn't forget to
hang up my stocking. "
This provoked a burst of mirth. Uncle Tom's stocking!
Uncle Tom hoping to get anything from Santa Claus!
"You needn't laugh," said Mr. Danby, seriously. "I mean
to hang up one of my big Inverness stockings. It will hoid a
lot. »
"What do you expect to get? " asked Laddie, intensely
amused. "Toys? "
"No: chocolates, butter-scotch, hardbake, alecompane. "
"Oh, what's alecompane? "
The name of this old-fashioned sweetmeat was received with
derision.
"Why, what an old sweet-tooth you must be! " exclaimed
Moppet; "but I don't believe you a bit. I shall come in the
middle of the night to see if your stocking is there. "
"You won't find my room. You'll go into the wrong room
most likely, and find one of the three bears. "
Moppet laughed at the notion of those familiar beasts.
## p. 2287 (#485) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2287
"There never were three bears that lived in a house, and
had beds and chairs and knives and forks and things," she said.
"I used to believe it once when I was very little "--she said
"veway little "-"but now I know it isn't true. "
She looked round the table with a solemn air, with her lips
pursed up, challenging contradiction. Her quaint little face, in
which the forehead somewhat overbalanced the tiny features
below it, was all aglow with mind. One could not imagine
more mind in any living creature than was compressed within
this quaint scrap of humanity.
Sir John watched her curiously. He had no experience of
children of that early age. His own daughters had been some
years older before he began to notice them. He could but
wonder at this quick and eager brain animating so infinitesimal
a body.
Moppet looked round the table; and what a table it was! She
had never seen anything like it. Cornwall, like Scotland, has a
prodigious reputation for breakfasts; but Cornwall, on occasion,
can almost rival Yorkshire in the matter of tea. Laddie and
Lassie had set to work already, one on each side of Miss Haw-
berk, who was engaged with urn and teapot. Moppet was less
intent upon food, and had more time to wonder and scrutinize.
Her big mind was hungrier than her little body.
"Oh, what a lot of candles! " she cried. "You must be very
rich, Mr. Old Gentleman. ".
Eight tall candles in two heavy old silver candelabra lighted
the large round table, and on the dazzling white cloth was spread
such a feast as little children love: cakes of many kinds, jams
and marmalade, buns, muffins, and crisp biscuits fresh from the
oven, scones both white and brown, and the rich golden-yellow
clotted cream, in the preparation of which Cornwall pretends to
surpass her sister Devon, as in her cider and perry and smoked
pig. It is only natural that Cornwall, in her stately seclusion
at the end of Western England, should look down upon Devon-
shire as sophisticated and almost cockney. Cornwall is to Devon
as the real Scottish Highlands are to the Trosachs. Besides the
cakes and jams and cream-bowl there were flowers: Christmas
roses, and real roses, yellow and red-such flowers as only grow.
in rich men's greenhouses; and there was a big silver urn in
which Laddie and Lassie could see their faces, red and broad
and shining, as they squeezed themselves each against one of
Adela's elbows.
## p. 2288 (#486) ###########################################
2288
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
"O Uncle Tom," suddenly exclaimed Lassie, in a rapturous
voice, "we shall never die here! "
"Not for want of food, certainly, Lassie. "
The children had eaten nothing since a very early dinner in
Plymouth, and on being pressed to eat by Miss Hawberk and Mr.
Danby, showed themselves frankly greedy. Sir John did nothing
but look on and wonder at them. They showed him a new
phase of humanity. Did life begin so soon? Was the mind so
fully awakened while the body was still so tiny? "How old are
you, Mistress Moppet? " he asked, when Moppet had finished her
first slice of saffron-cake.
"Four and a quarter. "
years.
Not five years old. She had lived in the world less than five
She talked of what she had thought and believed when
she was little, and she seemed to know as much about life as he
did at sixty-five.
"You are a wonderful little woman, not to be afraid of going
out visiting without your nurse. "
"Nurse! " echoed Moppet, staring at him with her big gray
eyes. "What's a nurse? "
"She doesn't know," explained Laddie: "we never had a
nurse. It's a woman like the one Julie has to take care of her,
Moppet," he explained, condescendingly, "a bonne we call her.
But we've never had a bonne," he added, with a superior air.
"Indeed? " exclaimed Sir John, "then pray who has taken care
of you, put you to bed at night, and washed and dressed you of
a morning, taken you out for walks, or wheeled you in a per-
ambulator? "
"Mother," cried the boy. "Mother does all that—except for
me. I dress myself—I take my own bath. Mother says I'm
growing quite inde-in-de-»
"Pendent! " screamed Moppet across the table. "What a silly
boy you are: you always forget the names of things. "
Moppet was getting excited. The small cheeks were flushed,
and the big eyes were getting bigger, and Moppet was inclined
to gesticulate a good deal when she talked, and to pat the table-
cloth with two little hands to give point to her speech.
"Moppet," said Mr. Danby, "the hot cakes are getting into
your head. I propose an adjournment to Bedfordshire. "
"No! no! NO! Uncle Tom. We ain't to go yet, is we? "
pleaded the child, snuggling close up to Sir John's waistcoat, with
a settled conviction that he was the higher authority. The lapse
## p. 2289 (#487) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2289
in grammar was the momentary result of excitement. In a gen-
eral way Moppet's tenses and persons were as correct as if she
had been twenty.
"I think you ought to be tired, after your long journey," said
the baronet.
"But it wasn't a long journey. We had dinner first, and in
the morning we walked on the Hoe. Isn't that a funny name
for a place? And we saw the sea, and Uncle Tom told us of
the_»
"Spanish Arcadia," interrupted Laddie, who felt it was his
turn now, "and how Drake and the other captains were playing
bowls on the Hoe, just where we were standing that very min-
ute, when the news of the Spanish ships came and they went off
to meet them; and there was a storm, and there was no fight-
ing wanted, for the storm smashed all the ships and they went
back to King Philip without any masts, and Queen Elizabeth
went on horseback to Tilbury, and that was the end of the
Arcadia. "
"For an historical synopsis I don't call that bad," said Mr.
Danby; "nevertheless, I recommend Bedfordshire if our little
friends have finished their tea. "
"I have," said Lassie, with a contented yawn.
Moppet did not want to go to bed. She had eaten less than
the other two, but she had talked more, and had slapped the
table, and had made faces, while Lassie and Laddie had been
models of good manners.
"I wish you wouldn't call it Bedfordshire," she said, shaking
her head vindictively at Mr. Danby. "It makes it worse to go
to bed when people make jokes about it! "
Mr. Danby came around to where she sat, and took her up in
his arms as if she had been a big doll instead of a small child.
"Say good-night to Sir John,” he said.
Moppet stooped her face down to the baronet's, and pursed
up her red lips in the prettiest little kiss, which was returned
quite heartily.
"Take her away, Danby: she is much too excited, and she is
the funniest little thing I ever saw. Good-night, my dears," he
said to the others, as he rose and walked toward the door. "I
hope you will spend a happy Christmas at Place. Adela, be sure
the little things are comfortable, and that Nurse Danby's instruc-
tions are obeyed. "
IV-144
## p. 2290 (#488) ###########################################
2290
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
The children laughed at this rude mention of Mr. Danby, and
went off to bed repeating the phrase "Nurse Danby" with much
chuckling and giggling.
Sir John Penlyon had just seated himself on the great oaken
settle in the chimney-corner, after somewhat languidly perform-
ing his duty as host. Moppet walked straight to him, clambered
on his knee, and nestled her head in his waistcoat, gazing up at
him with very much the same dumb devotion he had seen in
the topaz eyes of a favorite Clumber spaniel.
"Why, Moppet, are you tired of your new little friends? " he
asked kindly.
"I don't like children: they are so silly," answered Moppet,
with decision. "I like you much better. "
"Do you really, now! I wonder how much you like me. As
well as you like junket? "
"Oh, what a silly question! As if one could care for any
nice thing to eat as well as one cares for a live person. ”
"Couldn't one! I believe there are little boys in Boscastle
who are fonder of plum-pudding than of all their relations. "
"They must be horrid little boys. Laddie is greedy, but he
is not so greedy as that.
States are therefore always the result of a foreigner's observation.
His generous humanity appeals to all races, however, and his books
have been successfully translated into German, Russian, and Nor-
wegian. For years he had been collecting matter for an extensive
history of Scandinavian literature,- a task for which his nationality,
his scholarship, and his mastery of the English language especially
fitted him. His sudden death at forty-seven prevented its accom-
plishment, and perhaps deprived him of a still wider and solider
fame.
## p. 2275 (#473) ###########################################
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN
2275
A NORWEGIAN DANCE
From Gunnar, a Tale of Norse Life. ' Copyright 1874, by J. R. Osgood & Co.
Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons
THEY
HEY all hurried back to the hall. Gudrun might well wish to
ask questions, but she dared not; for she felt the truth, but
was afraid of it. They could not help seeing, when they
entered the hall, that many curious glances were directed toward
them. But this rather roused in both a spirit of defiance.
Therefore, when Gunnar was requested to begin the stev he
chose Ragnhild for his partner, and she accepted. True, he was
a houseman's son, but he was not afraid. There was a giggling
and a whispering all round, as hand in hand they stepped out
on the floor. Young and old, lads and maidens, thronged eagerly
about them. Had she not been so happy, perhaps she would not
have been so fair. But as she stood there in the warm flush
of the torchlight, with her rich blond hair waving down over
her shoulders, and with that veiled brightness in her eyes, her
beauty sprang upon you like a sudden wonder, and her presence
was inspiration. And Gunnar saw her; she loved him: what
cared he for all the world beside? Proudly he raised his head
and sang:-
Gunnar - There standeth a birch in the lightsome lea,
Ragnhild-
In the lightsome lea;
Gunnar So fair she stands in the sunlight free,
Ragnhild-
In the sunlight free;
Both-
So fair she stands in the sunlight free.
-
Gunnar
Both-
Ragnhild-High up on the mountain there standeth a pine,
There standeth a pine;
Gunnar
Ragnhild-So stanchly grown and so tall and fine,
So tall and fine;
So stanchly grown and so tall and fine.
-
A maiden I know as fair as the day,
As fair as the day;
Gunnar
Ragnhild-
Gunnar She shines like the birch in the sunlight's play,
Ragnhild-
In the sunlight's play;
Both- She shines like the birch in the sunlight's play.
-
Ragnhild-I know a lad in the spring's glad light,
In the spring's glad light;
Gunnar -
―
## p. 2276 (#474) ###########################################
2276
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN
Ragnhild-Far-seen as the pine on the mountain-height,
On the mountain-height;
Far-seen as the pine on the mountain-height.
Gunnar-
Both-
Gunnar So bright and blue are the starry skies,
Ragnhild-
The starry skies;
Gunnar
Ragnhild-
Both
But brighter and bluer that maiden's eyes,
That maiden's eyes;
But brighter and bluer that maiden's eyes.
-
Ragnhild-And his have a depth like the fjord, I know,
Gunnar
The fjord, I know;
Ragnhild-Wherein the heavens their beauty show,
Gunnar -
Their beauty show;
Both
Wherein the heavens their beauty show.
Gunnar The birds each morn seek the forest glade,
Ragnhild-
The forest glade;
Gunnar So flock my thoughts to that lily maid,
Ragnhild-
That lily maid;
Both
So flock my thoughts to that lily maid.
――――――
Ragnhild-The moss it clingeth so fast to the stone,
Gunnar
So fast to the stone;
Ragnhild-So clingeth my soul to him alone,
Gunnar
To him alone;
Both-
So clingeth my soul to him alone.
―
Gunnar -
Ragnhild-
Gunnar-
Ragnhild-
Both
-
-
Ragnhild-The plover hath but an only tone,
Gunnar
An only tone;
Ragnhild-My life hath its love, and its love alone,
Gunnar-
Its love alone;
Both
My life hath its love, and its love alone.
――――
Each brook sings its song, but forever the same,
Forever the same;
Forever my heart beats that maiden's name,
That maiden's name;
Forever my heart beats that maiden's name.
Gunnar The rivers all to the fjord they go,
Ragnhild-
To the fjord they go;
Gunnar So may our lives then together flow,
Ragnhild-
Together flow;
Both
Oh, may our lives then together flow!
-
## p. 2277 (#475) ###########################################
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN
2277
Here Gunnar stopped, made a leap toward Ragnhild, caught
her round the waist, and again danced off with her, while a
storm of voices joined in the last refrain, and loud shouts of
admiration followed them. For this was a stev that was good
for something; long time it was since so fine a stev had been
heard on this side of the mountains. Soon the dance became
general, and lasted till after midnight. Then the sleigh-bells and
the stamping of hoofs from without reminded the merry guests
that night was waning. There stood the well-known swan-shaped
sleigh from Henjum, and the man on the box was Atle himself.
Ragnhild and Gudrun were hurried into it, the whip cracked,
and the sleigh shot down over the star-illumined fields of snow.
The splendor of the night was almost dazzling as Gunnar
came out from the crowded hall and again stood under the open
sky. A host of struggling thoughts and sensations thronged
upon him.
He was happy, oh, so happy! —at least he tried to
persuade himself that he was; but strange to say, he did not
fully succeed. Was it not toward this day his yearnings had
pointed, and about which his hopes had been clustering from
year to year, ever since he had been old enough to know what
yearning was? Was it not this day which had been beckoning
him from afar, and had shed light upon his way like a star, and
had he not followed its guidance as faithfully and as trustingly as
those wise men of old? "Folly and nonsense," muttered he; "the
night breeds nightly thoughts! " With an effort he again brought
Ragnhild's image before his mind, jumped upon his skees, and
darted down over the glittering snow. It bore him toward the
fjord. A sharp, chill wind swept up the hillside, and rushed against
him. "Houseman's son! " cried the wind. Onward he hastened.
"Houseman's son! " howled the wind after him. Soon he reached
the fjord, hurried on up toward the river-mouth, and coming to
the Henjum boat-house, stopped, and walked out to the end of
the pier, which stretched from the headland some twenty to thirty
feet out into the water. The fjord lay sombre and restless
before him. There was evidently a storm raging in the ocean,
for the tide was unusually high, and the sky was darkening from
the west eastward. The mountain-peaks stood there, stern and
lofty as ever, with their heads wrapped in hoods of cloud. Gun-
nar sat down at the outer edge of the pier, with his feet hang-
ing listlessly over the water, which, in slow and monotonous
plashing, beat against the timbers. Far out in the distance he
## p. 2278 (#476) ###########################################
2278
HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN
could hear the breakers roar among the rocky reefs; first the
long, booming roll, then the slowly waning moan, and the great
hush, in which the billows pause to listen to themselves. It is
the heavy deep-drawn breath of the ocean. It was cold, but
Gunnar hardly felt it.
He again stepped into his skees and followed the narrow road,
as it wound its way from the fjord up along the river. Down
near the mouth, between Henjum and Rimul, the river was
frozen, and could be crossed on the ice. Up at Henjumhei it
was too swift to freeze. It was near daylight when he reached
the cottage. How small and poor it looked! Never had he seen
it so before; - very different from Rimul. And how dark and
narrow it was all around it! At Rimul they had always sun-
shine. Truly, the track is steep from Henjumhei to Rimul; the
river runs deep between.
## p. 2279 (#477) ###########################################
2279
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
(1837-)
W
HATEVER objections may be made to the sensational character
of many of Miss Braddon's earlier novels, her place is cer-
tainly in the ranks of the "born" story-tellers. Although
still in the prime of life, she has been before the public for thirty-
seven years. Her books have been produced in amazingly rapid and
continuous succession. She was born in London in 1837, wrote little
stories in her early teens, and was fond of entertaining her com-
panions with startling original tales.
When a young girl she conceived a passion for the stage, and a
dramatic or melodramatic - element is conspicuous in most of her
novels. She was barely twenty-one when she had completed a comedi-
etta, The Lover of Arcadia,' which, after many alterations and
revisions, was put on the stage of the Strand Theatre in 1860, with —
naturally but moderate success. Her disappointment was extreme.
She gave up the hope of becoming a successful dramatist. Her next
venture, like that of most young authors, was a small volume of
poems, of which Garibaldi was the chief theme. About this time she
also wrote a number of highly colored, much strained tales in the
Temple Bar and St. James' magazines. These tales drew attention,
and awoke an echo which neither the comedietta nor the poems had
done, making it clear to her that in narrative fiction lay her strength.
She was ambitious, she wanted money even more than reputation,
and she has followed narrative fiction most diligently ever since, with
widening and indisputable success.
In 1862 appeared her first full-fledged novel, 'Lady Audley's Se-
cret. ' It achieved instantaneous distinction and an enormous sale,
six editions being disposed of in as many weeks. She had finally hit
the mark, though not by accident. She had carefully thought out a
new scheme, and had corrected literary mistakes by her late expe-
rience. She knew that the first desire of novel readers is for novelty,
a characteristic usually preferred to originality, which is often much
more slowly recognized. Mrs. Gore's fashionable novels, correct in
portraiture and upholstery, clever but monotonous, had had their
day; Mrs. Trollope's coarse and caustic delineations; G. P. R. James's
combats, adventures, skirmishes, disguises, trials, and escapes, and
Bulwer's sentimental and grandiloquent romances, had begun to pall
upon the public taste. Miss Braddon perceived that the time had
-
--
## p. 2280 (#478) ###########################################
2280
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
come for something new, so 'Lady Audley's Secret' was a striking
innovation.
Hitherto, wickedness had been ugly. She endued it with grace
and beauty. She invented a mystery of crime surrounded by every-
day circumstances, yet avoiding the "detective novel» mechanism.
A new story, Aurora Floyd,' repeated the immense success of
'Lady Audley. ' Novel after novel followed, full of momentous inci-
dents, of surprises leading to new surprises. All the time Miss Brad-
don was observing much, correcting much in her methods and ideas.
She studied manners closely; drew ingenious inferences; suggested
dramatic and startling conclusions. She has, too, introduced into
modern fiction the beguiling female fiend, who, like the Italian
duchess of the Middle Ages, betrays with a smile, and with one arm
about her lover beckons to the hired bravo to do his bloody work.
Her plots, though sometimes forced, are ingenious and exciting. The
movement of her stories is swift, and the scenes and personages con-
tribute to the appointed end. As the author has grown in literary
stature, a finer and often admirable effort is made to analyze or to
develop character, as an element subservient to the exigencies of the
stirring catastrophe.
Her style and treatment have matured with practice and with
years, and her later novels display artistic form and finish. Her
'Mohawks' is in many respects a superb study of fashionable life,
with several historical portraits introduced, of London in the time of
Pope, St. John, Walpole, and Chesterfield a tableau of great move-
ment and accuracy of composition. In thirty-five years she has writ-
ten more than sixty stories, the best of them being perhaps this fine
semi-historical melodrama. Several of her earlier fictions have been
successfully dramatized. An exquisite little tale for Christmas-tide,
'The Christmas Hirelings,' is an evidence of her lightness of touch
and refinement of conception in a trifle. In 1874 Miss Braddon mar-
ried John Maxwell, a well-known London publisher.
――――
## p. 2281 (#479) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2281
THE ADVENT OF THE HIRELINGS>
E
From The Christmas Hirelings': copyrighted by Harper and Brothers
VERYTHING had been made ready for the little strangers.
There were fires blazing in two large bedrooms overhead-
rooms with a door of communication. In one there were
still the two little white beds in which Lilian and Sibyl had
slept when they were children; poor Lilian, whose bed was in
the English cemetery at Florence, under a white marble monu-
ment erected by her sorrowing husband, and whose sorrowing
husband had taken to himself a second wife five years ago.
Every one knew where Lilian was lying, but no one at Penlyon
Castle knew where Sibyl's head had found rest. All that people
knew about the disobedient daughter was that her husband had
died within three or four years of her marriage, worn to death
in some foreign mission. Of his luckless widow no one at Pen-
lyon had heard anything, but it was surmised that her father
made her an allowance. He could hardly let his only daughter
starve, people said, however badly she might have treated him.
Lady Lurgrave's early death had been a crushing blow to his
love and to his pride. She had died childless.
Sir John had heard the carriage stop, and the opening of the
hall door; and although he pretended to go on reading his paper
by the lamp placed close at his elbow, the pretense was a poor
one, and anybody might have seen that he was listening with
all his might.
The footman had opened the hall door as the wheels drew
near; it was wide open when the carriage stopped. The red
light from the hall fire streamed out upon the evening gray, and
three little silvery voices were heard exclaiming:-
"Oh, what a pretty house! "
"Oh, what a big house! "
And then the smallest voice of the three with amazing dis
tinctness:
"What an exceedingly red fire. "
The carriage door flew open, and two little girls all in red
from top to toe, and one little boy in gray, rolled out in a heap,
or seemed to roll out, like puppies out of a basket, scrambled
## p. 2282 (#480) ###########################################
2282
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
on to their feet and ran up the steps,-Mr. Danby, slim and
jaunty as usual, following them.
"Good gracious, how tiny they are! " cried Adela, stooping
down to kiss the smaller girl, a round red bundle, with a round
little face, and large dark gray eyes shining in the firelight.
The tiny thing accepted the kiss somewhat shrinkingly, and
looked about her, awed by the grandeur of the hall, the large
fireplace and blazing logs, the men in armor, or the suits of
armor standing up and pretending to be men.
"I don't like them," said the tiny girl, clinging to Danby
and pointing at one of these mailed warriors with a muffled red
hand: "they're not alive, are they, Uncle Tom? "
"No, no, no, Moppet, they're as dead as door-nails. "
"Are they? I don't like dead people. "
"Come, come, Moppet, suppose they're not people at all-no
more than a rocking-horse is a real live horse. We'll pull one of
them down to-morrow and look inside him, and then you'll be
satisfied. "
The larger scarlet mite, larger by about an inch, older by a
year, was standing before the fire, gravely warming her hands,
spreading them out before the blaze as much as hands so tiny
could spread themselves. The boy was skipping about the hall,
looking at everything, the armed warriors especially, and not at
all afraid.
"They're soldiers, aren't they? " he asked.
"Yes, Laddie. "
"I should like to be dressed like that, and go into a battle
and kill lots of people. I couldn't be killed myself, could I, if I
had that stuff all over me? "
"Perhaps not, Laddie; but I don't think it would answer.
You'd be an anachronism. ”
"I wouldn't mind being a nackerism if it saved me from
being killed," said Laddie.
"Come, little ones, come and be presented to your host," said
Mr. Danby, as the footman opened the library door; and they
all poured in-Danby, Adela, and the children- the smallest
running in first, her sister and the boy following, considerably
in advance of the grown-ups.
Moppet ran right into the middle of the room as fast as her
little red legs could carry her; then seeing Sir John sitting where
the bright lamplight shown full upon his pale elderly face, with
## p. 2283 (#481) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2283
its strongly marked features, black eyebrows, and silvery-gray
hair, she stopped suddenly as if she had beheld a Gorgon, and
began to back slowly till she brought herself up against the
silken skirt of Adela Hawberk's gown; and in that soft drapery
she in a manner absorbed herself, till there was nothing to be
seen of the little neatly rounded figure except the tip of a bright
red cap and the toes of two bright red gaiters.
The elder mite had advanced less boldly, and had not to beat
so ignominious a retreat. She was near enough to Mr. Danby
to clutch his hand, and holding by that she was hardly at all
frightened.
The boy, older, bolder, and less sensitive than either of the
girls, went skipping around the library as he had skipped about
the hall, looking at things and apparently unconscious of Sir
John Penlyon's existence.
"How d'ye do, Danby? " said Sir John, holding out his hand
as his old friend advanced to the fire, the little red girl hanging
on to his left hand, while he gave his right to his host. "Upon
my word, I began to think you were never coming back. You've
been an unconscionable time. One would suppose you had to
fetch the children from the world's end. "
"I had to bring them to the world's end, you might say.
Boscastle is something more than a day's journey from London
in the depth of winter. "
"And are these the children? Good heavens, Danby! what
could you be thinking about to bring us such morsels of hu-
manity? "
"We wanted children," said Danby, "not hobbledehoys. "
"Hobbledehoys! no, but there is reason in everything. You
couldn't suppose I wanted infants like these-look at that little
scrap hidden in Adela's frock. It's positively dreadful to contem-
plate! They will be getting under my feet. I shall be treading
upon them, and hurting them seriously. "
"No you won't, Jack; I'll answer for that. "
"Why not, pray? "
"Because of their individuality. They are small, but they
are people. When Moppet comes into a room everybody knows
she is there. She is a little scared now; but she will be as bold
* as brass in a quarter of an hour. "
Sir John Penlyon put on his spectacles and looked at the
little hirelings more critically. Their youth and diminutive size
## p. 2284 (#482) ###########################################
2284
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
had been a shock to him. He had expected bouncing children
with rosy faces, long auburn hair, and a good deal of well-
developed leg showing beneath a short frock. These, measured
against his expectations, were positively microscopic.
Their cheeks were pale rather than rosy. Their hair was
neither auburn nor long. It was dark hair, and it was cropped
close to the neat little heads, showing every bump in the broad,
clever-looking foreheads. Sir John's disapproving eyes showed
him that the children were more intelligent than the common
run of children; but for the moment he was not disposed to
accept intelligence instead of size.
"They are preposterously small," he said "not at all the
kind of thing I expected. They will get lost under chairs or
buried alive in waste-paper baskets. I wash my hands of them.
Take them away, Adela. Let them be fed and put to bed. ”
Then turning to Mr.
Danby as if to dismiss the subject, "Any-
thing stirring in London when you were there, Tom? "
Before Danby could answer, Moppet emerged from her shelter,
advanced deliberately, and planted herself in front of Sir John
Penlyon, looking him straight in the face.
"I'm sorry you don't like us, Mr. Old Gentleman," she said.
Every syllable came with clear precision from those infantine
lips. Moppet's strong point was her power of speech. Firm,
decisive, correct as to intonation came every sentence from the
lips of this small personage. Ponderous polysyllables were no
trouble to Moppet. There was only an occasional consonant that
baffled her.
"Who says I don't like you? " said Sir John, taken aback,
and lifting the animated bundle of red cloth on to his knee.
He found there was something very substantial inside the
wooly cloak and gaiters: a pair of round plump arms and sturdy
little legs, a compact little figure which perched firmly on his knee.
"You said so," retorted Moppet, with her large gray eyes
very wide open, and looking full into his. "You don't like us
because we are so very small. Everybody says we are small, but
everybody doesn't mind. Why do you mind? "
"I didn't say anything about not liking you, little one. I was
only afraid you were too small to go out visiting. "
"I went out to tea when I was two, and nobody said I was
too small. I have real tea at parties, not milk-and-water. And
I have been out to tea often and often-haven't I, Lassie ? »
## p. 2285 (#483) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2285
"Not so many times as I have,” replied the elder red thing,
with dignity.
She was standing in front of the wide old fireplace, warming
her hands, and she was to Sir John's eye somewhat suggestive
of a robin-redbreast that had fluttered in and lighted there.
"Of course not, because you're older," said Moppet, disgusted
at this superfluous self-assertion on her sister's part.
"I am
always good at parties—ain't I, Uncle Tom? " turning an appeal-
ing face to Mr. Danby.
"So these Lilliputians are your nieces, Danby! " exclaimed
Sir John.
"Well, no, they are not exactly nieces, though they are very
near and dear. I am only a jury uncle. "
"A jury uncle! " cried Moppet, throwing her head back and
laughing at the unknown word.
"A jury uncle! " echoed the other two, and the three laughed
prodigiously; not because they attached any meaning to the
word, but only because they didn't know what it meant. That
was where the joke lay.
"You know that in Cornwall and in Sicily all the elderly
men are uncles, and all the old women aunts-everybody's
uncles and aunts," concluded Mr. Danby.
Moppet still occupied Sir John's knee. She felt somehow
that it was a post of honor, and she had no inclination to sur-
render it. Her tiny fingers had possessed themselves of his
watch-chain.
"Please show me your watch," she said.
Sir John drew out a big hunter.
Moppet approached her little rosy mouth to the hinge and
blew violently.
"Why don't it open as Uncle Tom's watch does when I
blow? " she asked. "Is it broken? "
"Blow again, and we'll see about that," said Sir John, under-
standing the manœuvre.
The big bright case flew open as Moppet blew.
"Take care it doesn't bite your nose off. ”
“How big and bright it is—much bigger and brighter than
Uncle Tom's. "
"Uncle Tom's is a lady's watch, and Uncle Tom's a lady's
man," said Sir John, and the triple peal of childish laughter
which greeted this remark made him fancy himself a wit.
1
## p. 2286 (#484) ###########################################
2286
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
Small as they were, these children were easily amused, and
that was a point in their favor, he thought.
"Tea is ready in the breakfast-room," said Adela.
"Tea in the breakfast-room. Oh, how funny! " And again
they all laughed.
At any rate, they were not doleful children-
no homesick airs, no bilious headaches -— so far.
"I dare say they will all start measles or whooping-cough
before we have done with them," thought Sir John, determined
not to be hopeful.
"Oh, we are to come to tea, are we? " he said, cheerily, and
he actually carried Moppet all the way to the breakfast-room,
almost at the other end of the rambling old house, and planted
her in a chair by his side at the tea-table. She nestled up close
beside him.
"You like us now, don't you? she asked.
"I like you. "
--
no long faces,
"And you'll like her," pointing to her sister with a small
distinct finger, "and him," pointing to her brother, "to-morrow
morning. You'll know us all to-morrow morning. "
"To-morrow will be Christmas," said Laddie, as if giving a
piece of useful information to the company in general.
"Christmas! " cried Danby; "so it will. I mustn't forget to
hang up my stocking. "
This provoked a burst of mirth. Uncle Tom's stocking!
Uncle Tom hoping to get anything from Santa Claus!
"You needn't laugh," said Mr. Danby, seriously. "I mean
to hang up one of my big Inverness stockings. It will hoid a
lot. »
"What do you expect to get? " asked Laddie, intensely
amused. "Toys? "
"No: chocolates, butter-scotch, hardbake, alecompane. "
"Oh, what's alecompane? "
The name of this old-fashioned sweetmeat was received with
derision.
"Why, what an old sweet-tooth you must be! " exclaimed
Moppet; "but I don't believe you a bit. I shall come in the
middle of the night to see if your stocking is there. "
"You won't find my room. You'll go into the wrong room
most likely, and find one of the three bears. "
Moppet laughed at the notion of those familiar beasts.
## p. 2287 (#485) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2287
"There never were three bears that lived in a house, and
had beds and chairs and knives and forks and things," she said.
"I used to believe it once when I was very little "--she said
"veway little "-"but now I know it isn't true. "
She looked round the table with a solemn air, with her lips
pursed up, challenging contradiction. Her quaint little face, in
which the forehead somewhat overbalanced the tiny features
below it, was all aglow with mind. One could not imagine
more mind in any living creature than was compressed within
this quaint scrap of humanity.
Sir John watched her curiously. He had no experience of
children of that early age. His own daughters had been some
years older before he began to notice them. He could but
wonder at this quick and eager brain animating so infinitesimal
a body.
Moppet looked round the table; and what a table it was! She
had never seen anything like it. Cornwall, like Scotland, has a
prodigious reputation for breakfasts; but Cornwall, on occasion,
can almost rival Yorkshire in the matter of tea. Laddie and
Lassie had set to work already, one on each side of Miss Haw-
berk, who was engaged with urn and teapot. Moppet was less
intent upon food, and had more time to wonder and scrutinize.
Her big mind was hungrier than her little body.
"Oh, what a lot of candles! " she cried. "You must be very
rich, Mr. Old Gentleman. ".
Eight tall candles in two heavy old silver candelabra lighted
the large round table, and on the dazzling white cloth was spread
such a feast as little children love: cakes of many kinds, jams
and marmalade, buns, muffins, and crisp biscuits fresh from the
oven, scones both white and brown, and the rich golden-yellow
clotted cream, in the preparation of which Cornwall pretends to
surpass her sister Devon, as in her cider and perry and smoked
pig. It is only natural that Cornwall, in her stately seclusion
at the end of Western England, should look down upon Devon-
shire as sophisticated and almost cockney. Cornwall is to Devon
as the real Scottish Highlands are to the Trosachs. Besides the
cakes and jams and cream-bowl there were flowers: Christmas
roses, and real roses, yellow and red-such flowers as only grow.
in rich men's greenhouses; and there was a big silver urn in
which Laddie and Lassie could see their faces, red and broad
and shining, as they squeezed themselves each against one of
Adela's elbows.
## p. 2288 (#486) ###########################################
2288
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
"O Uncle Tom," suddenly exclaimed Lassie, in a rapturous
voice, "we shall never die here! "
"Not for want of food, certainly, Lassie. "
The children had eaten nothing since a very early dinner in
Plymouth, and on being pressed to eat by Miss Hawberk and Mr.
Danby, showed themselves frankly greedy. Sir John did nothing
but look on and wonder at them. They showed him a new
phase of humanity. Did life begin so soon? Was the mind so
fully awakened while the body was still so tiny? "How old are
you, Mistress Moppet? " he asked, when Moppet had finished her
first slice of saffron-cake.
"Four and a quarter. "
years.
Not five years old. She had lived in the world less than five
She talked of what she had thought and believed when
she was little, and she seemed to know as much about life as he
did at sixty-five.
"You are a wonderful little woman, not to be afraid of going
out visiting without your nurse. "
"Nurse! " echoed Moppet, staring at him with her big gray
eyes. "What's a nurse? "
"She doesn't know," explained Laddie: "we never had a
nurse. It's a woman like the one Julie has to take care of her,
Moppet," he explained, condescendingly, "a bonne we call her.
But we've never had a bonne," he added, with a superior air.
"Indeed? " exclaimed Sir John, "then pray who has taken care
of you, put you to bed at night, and washed and dressed you of
a morning, taken you out for walks, or wheeled you in a per-
ambulator? "
"Mother," cried the boy. "Mother does all that—except for
me. I dress myself—I take my own bath. Mother says I'm
growing quite inde-in-de-»
"Pendent! " screamed Moppet across the table. "What a silly
boy you are: you always forget the names of things. "
Moppet was getting excited. The small cheeks were flushed,
and the big eyes were getting bigger, and Moppet was inclined
to gesticulate a good deal when she talked, and to pat the table-
cloth with two little hands to give point to her speech.
"Moppet," said Mr. Danby, "the hot cakes are getting into
your head. I propose an adjournment to Bedfordshire. "
"No! no! NO! Uncle Tom. We ain't to go yet, is we? "
pleaded the child, snuggling close up to Sir John's waistcoat, with
a settled conviction that he was the higher authority. The lapse
## p. 2289 (#487) ###########################################
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2289
in grammar was the momentary result of excitement. In a gen-
eral way Moppet's tenses and persons were as correct as if she
had been twenty.
"I think you ought to be tired, after your long journey," said
the baronet.
"But it wasn't a long journey. We had dinner first, and in
the morning we walked on the Hoe. Isn't that a funny name
for a place? And we saw the sea, and Uncle Tom told us of
the_»
"Spanish Arcadia," interrupted Laddie, who felt it was his
turn now, "and how Drake and the other captains were playing
bowls on the Hoe, just where we were standing that very min-
ute, when the news of the Spanish ships came and they went off
to meet them; and there was a storm, and there was no fight-
ing wanted, for the storm smashed all the ships and they went
back to King Philip without any masts, and Queen Elizabeth
went on horseback to Tilbury, and that was the end of the
Arcadia. "
"For an historical synopsis I don't call that bad," said Mr.
Danby; "nevertheless, I recommend Bedfordshire if our little
friends have finished their tea. "
"I have," said Lassie, with a contented yawn.
Moppet did not want to go to bed. She had eaten less than
the other two, but she had talked more, and had slapped the
table, and had made faces, while Lassie and Laddie had been
models of good manners.
"I wish you wouldn't call it Bedfordshire," she said, shaking
her head vindictively at Mr. Danby. "It makes it worse to go
to bed when people make jokes about it! "
Mr. Danby came around to where she sat, and took her up in
his arms as if she had been a big doll instead of a small child.
"Say good-night to Sir John,” he said.
Moppet stooped her face down to the baronet's, and pursed
up her red lips in the prettiest little kiss, which was returned
quite heartily.
"Take her away, Danby: she is much too excited, and she is
the funniest little thing I ever saw. Good-night, my dears," he
said to the others, as he rose and walked toward the door. "I
hope you will spend a happy Christmas at Place. Adela, be sure
the little things are comfortable, and that Nurse Danby's instruc-
tions are obeyed. "
IV-144
## p. 2290 (#488) ###########################################
2290
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
The children laughed at this rude mention of Mr. Danby, and
went off to bed repeating the phrase "Nurse Danby" with much
chuckling and giggling.
Sir John Penlyon had just seated himself on the great oaken
settle in the chimney-corner, after somewhat languidly perform-
ing his duty as host. Moppet walked straight to him, clambered
on his knee, and nestled her head in his waistcoat, gazing up at
him with very much the same dumb devotion he had seen in
the topaz eyes of a favorite Clumber spaniel.
"Why, Moppet, are you tired of your new little friends? " he
asked kindly.
"I don't like children: they are so silly," answered Moppet,
with decision. "I like you much better. "
"Do you really, now! I wonder how much you like me. As
well as you like junket? "
"Oh, what a silly question! As if one could care for any
nice thing to eat as well as one cares for a live person. ”
"Couldn't one! I believe there are little boys in Boscastle
who are fonder of plum-pudding than of all their relations. "
"They must be horrid little boys. Laddie is greedy, but he
is not so greedy as that.
